Mission & Justice

Sian Powell; 17/5/08

Naldo Rei was nine years old when he crept into the jungle on his first mission for the East Timorese resistance movement. Like so many in East Timor, he spent decades fighting for freedom. Now a 32-year-old public information officer in the troubled new nation, Rei says the 24 years of danger and bloody struggle have yet to deliver peace and stability. The tiny country is now riven by regional loyalties. Tens of thousands of dispirited East Timorese live in tents, fearing to rebuild their burned and destroyed homes. Worse still, earlier this year rebels tried to kill the East Timorese President, Jose Ramos Horta. “We wanted peace, stability, a democratic society,” Rei said. “We don’t want to live in violence and fearing everyone all the time.”

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6/5/08

Four former East Timorese soldiers deported from Indonesia yesterday face jail terms of up to 25 years if they are convicted over attacks on the fledgling nation’s leaders, prosecutors say. Indonesia deported the four men under heavy security, two weeks after they were caught in Indonesia’s West Timor and the capital Jakarta. The men fled East Timor after the February 11 attacks on East Timor’s President Jose Ramos Horta and Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao. East Timorese Prosecutor-General Longuinos Monteiro said the men would be interrogated in Dili.

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Paul Toohey; 26/4/08

Rebel lieutenant Gastao Salsinha last night surrendered after two years on the run and put himself in the personal control of East Timor’s most senior army officer, Brigadier Tuar Matan Ruak. Salsinha’s capitulation will hopefully bring to an end two years of stand-offs, negotiations and violence that has torn the country apart. Salsinha, who allegedly led the attack on Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao on February 11 while Alfredo Reinado launched the raid on President Jose Ramos Horta’s compound, spent yesterday sitting in a house in Ermera, in the west of East Timor, with a Catholic Church priest acting as his mediator as armed forces surrounded the position. Negotiators had gone to a house near the town of Gleno, atSalsinha’s suggestion, to collect him.

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21/4/08

Indonesian police have arrested three East Timorese soldiers in relation to the attacks two months ago on two of East Timor’s most senior leaders, according to the Indonesian president. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono made the announcement on Sa turday in Jakarta, the Indonesian capital. Jose Ramos-Horta, East Timor’s prime minister, and Xanana Gusmao, the president, were attacked in Dili, the capital, in February. Ramos-Horta was critically wounded, while Gusmao escaped unharmed.

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Nick McKenzie; 21/4/08

Serving and former soldiers have broken ranks to expose the neglect, bullying and bastardisation faced by some Australian Defence Force personnel with mental health problems. The soldiers, who have served in the Middle East, East Timor and Africa, claim they were denied adequate support and ostracised after seeking help for mental health problems. The Age can also reveal that the family of an army captain who has served twice in Iraq and who has severe mental health problems has claimed he received an appalling level of care at a Queensland defence base in February. A letter from Defence about the incident says its health services work in a “frugal financial environment”.

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17/4/08

East Timor’s president has toughened his stance on rebels who tried to kill him after thousands of supporters gathered to welcome him home. Security was tight as Jose Ramos-Horta was greeted by a military parade at the airport in the capital, Dili, on Thursday. Returning from more than two months of medical treatment in Australia following the assassination attempt in February, he was greeted by thousands of people shouting “Viva President Ramos-Horta”. Huge posters saying “Mr President, Timor is praying and waiting for you” dotted the route to his house near a tourist beach in the eastern part of Dili

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Mark Dodd; 16/4/08

Impoverished East Timor has signed a $28 million deal with China to buy two advanced patrol boats in a move that will alarm Australia and Indonesia about increasing Chinese influence in the struggling nation. The deal was signed on April 12 by Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao, Secretary of State for Defence Julio Pinto and Hao Yantan from the Chinese defence company Poly-Technic. China has been steadily increasing its presence in East Timor. It is involved in oil and gas exploration and was responsible for compiling a geological survey of the half-island state. China has also recently built a massive Foreign Ministry office on Dili’s waterfront.

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Tom Hyland; 13/4/08

Canberra is maintaining a diplomatic silence over Indonesia’s failure to punish anyone implicated in the mass murders that led to Australia’s military intervention in East Timor in 1999. Instead, the Federal Government has backed a “friendship” commission set up by Indonesia and East Timor, which is about to report but has no power to call for prosecutions and was boycotted by the UN. The release last week of former militia leader Eurico Guterres after a Jakarta court overthrew his conviction means all those charged by Indonesian prosecutors over the violence that killed about 1500 people have now been freed. Mr Guterres, a former petty criminal with powerful backers in Jakarta, now plans to run for the Indonesian parliament next year.

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Mark Dodd; 8/4/08

A scathing UN report, obtained by The Australian, argues the force is politically manipulated, chronically mismanaged and massively underfunded. And it warns a long-term commitment is needed by East Timor’s international backers to repair the damage exacerbated by deadly inter-communal violence in 2006. Australia - East Timor’s principal national security guarantor - is expected to shoulder a significant part of the financial and training burden to rebuild the police force. But experts warn there are few examples in the world of a successfully rebuilt police force when there is no stable democratic government.

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6/4/08

Former militia leader Eurico Guterres — the only Indonesian jailed for the destruction of East Timor that claimed about 1500 lives in 1999 — has been acquitted by a Jakarta court. The decision means all the men, most of them Indonesian military officers, charged by Indonesian prosecutors over the violence during the 1999 independence referendum have now been acquitted. News of his acquittal came as the US announced it would accept the findings of an official truth commission probing killings by Indonesian troops during East Timor’s break from Jakarta — despite a UN boycott of the process and criticism by human rights groups.

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